The Entitlement Generation article

Thought it was an ok article, could have dug much deeper into the topic but either way. I would have to agree somewhat. With WoW of course we have seen changes over the past 8yrs that molded the game into what it is. Many things are easier to get but some still remain challenging and more n more complain of difficulties. So do you guys agree disagree, keep arguments as civil as possible

Surprising WoW wasnt mentioned in this. In my opinion this entitlement in video games generation began when video games all of a sudden became cool and no longer just something nerds and losers played in their parents basements (xboxish, ps2, generations Id say it started). You were shunned for playing Everquest, Asherons Call, Ultima Online and NES/SNES while I was growing up and thats just the way it was. Blizzard was like hey this is a good formula lets casualize the shit out of this "MMo" thing. Its like after 2000ish everybody just started this everyones a winner shit. I remember a few years ago I was at a school sports game for one of my friends kids in Washington and almost got kicked out for booing I was like wtf are you serious. "It hurts the kids feelings" it was a highschool game and sorry but welcome to the real world everything isnt going to be given to you and if you suck you suck lol.

Im just kinda ranting it is pretty annoying this newer generation of I deserve everything and anything without putting the work into it.

Every time somebody uses the word "Entitlement", a Republican gets hit with a pie...

...in the face...

...usually thrown by me. :P

- it's when they COMBINE a video game that one plays for general pleasure/relaxation after a hard day at work/school and treat the Warcraft society like they should be playing a video game at the same stress-level as their real-life jobs (ore real-life in general)... that's what frightens me.... >_<

Isn't it immature that you call him Donald "Dump"?
I agree, it's childish and stupid - and that's my point. it's meant as a deliberate mockery of his blatant disrespect via using "Crooked Hillary", and thus I can call him "Dump" since he dumps his campaign promises, dumps campaign managers, dumps his wives, wants to dump the first amendment, dumps common-sense war ethics and dumps the use of proper English in favor of a mongrel white-trash dialect.

It's cute but I feel like I've heard it all before. From my anecdotal evidence, I live in California, which is pretty much THE most hippie, liberal, commie, self-esteem fostering, loser-hugging state in the union... and we still play sports in school and keep score. Even my younger sister who is still in the school system plays sports for win/lose. I'm only in my 20s and we constantly had competitive events at school, even back in elementary school. We did competitions in math class, for fuck's sake. Fake Jeopardy, winning team gets extra credit points, etc.

There have always been sore losers. Heck, you can look at sports footage from more than a generation ago and see grown men getting mad and beating the crap out of each other, especially football or hockey. You never seen your dad watch a baseball game where his team loses and he cusses up a storm? Well, some people do that over video games.

If anything, games are more competitive now than they have EVER been. Who were you competing with playing Metroid on your NES? No one. Maybe with yourself. There were no sparkly achievements to wave in everyone's face like a giant, sparkly wang. There was no online multiplayer where you could spend all day stomping faces.

They were a solo activity, or an activity enjoyed only with a friend or family member who was physically in the room with you, outside of very, very rare, niche tournaments that catered only to the nerdiest of nerds. We have a lot more winners and losers in gaming now than we ever did at any point in history. Practically everything has a competitive multiplayer element, and more games than ever before have real, dedicated tournament circuits with cash prizes and professional teams. Cases of incoherent screaming rage at live tournaments these days are very rare, at least from my experience with the few games I have followed. I have never seen anyone scream or threaten physical violence to another at a Smash Bros or Soul Calibur tournament, for sure. People on Xbox live are just being the way humans are when we're anonymous and nothing bad will happen.

With WoW, the game is better than it ever has been. There are hard modes and challenge modes for those who want hard content. But with other games, there is much lame sauce. Some of the best games ever in my opinion were from the SNES days. Super Metroid and A Link to the Past are some of my favorite games because you aren't hand held and there hidden hard modes built in. Super Metroid allows for sequence breaking if you can master the wall kick. The fastest way to do a 100% run without using glitches is to go through most of the game without getting most of the secrets in Brinstar and Crateria until near the end when you have all the upgrades and can do them all in one fell swoop. In this way, you have to kill Phantoon with only 4 energy tanks, which is tricky. Then later on, you have to fight Ridley with a limited amount of energy and ammo. There's a lot of rooms in Maridia that appear useless but the entire map is used if you are doing efficient pathing which isn't obvious at first glance.

As for A Link to the Past, the focus is survivability based on your ability to use items effectively. Also, in the Dark World, the order you do the dungeons in does not have to be in order from 1-7. It actually makes more sense to do 1, 4, 2, 5, 6, 3, 7 so you get your sword and armor upgrade sooner. The original Zelda for the NES was hard but if you knew what you were doing, you could have 6 hearts and your sword upgrade before entering the first dungeon. Later Zelda games are linear and lost the spirit of the series, which was originally developed to be non linear (while Mario was developed to be linear). I can't say they have made 2d Mario easier over the years. And that DKC for the Wii was insanely hard. I enjoyed the Metroid Prime series and I won't say that was easier either. I don't play Playstation or XBox so I cannot comment on those.

WoW's issues came in the form of accessibility. For me, getting into a guild and scheduling time to play a game is unreasonably and unfun. I live a more spontaneous lifestyle doesn't work for me. I like the concepts they did in Vanilla and BC but they kept me out. The entirety of BC I worked a job at a call center from 3:30-midnight every week day and only had the weekends off, so it just didn't work. Now, we have LFD and LFR. These are things I imagined the game having reading about it in beta (this was before I ever played an MMO). Now, if you are willing to put the time into it, you can progress through all the raid content and can eventually get a legendary without having to deal with the guild drama and annoying personalities in them. You can raid when you want and aren't obligated to any of the people you group with. So, I don't think WoW's changes are in regards to entitlement since the MMO genera's hardcore raiding system was ridicules to begin with.

In some ways the blame is due to parenting and societal norms these days, but if there's anything else to blame, it's the publishers/devs for creating very short games.

When I played Deus Ex back in the day, it took over 100hrs to complete it. Now someone could speed run it, but they'll miss all the exploration (and finding goodies in the process and having fun with LAMs and gas grenades). Around 2006 this all changed with "week end' games. So games became more like 8hr speed runs. A diet of speed runs and fast games (and very intense gameplay) gives us a generation of gamers too addicted to that type of gameplay. The 15hr "old skool" raider became an antiquary, while the 2hr or 2 wipe players became the norm.

So it's a combination of both that created what we have today, and once again, devs need to also accept responsibility. Art for art's sake can backfire.

From the #1 Cata review on Amazon.com: "Blizzard's greatest misstep was blaming players instead of admitting their mistakes.
They've convinced half of the population that the other half are unskilled whiners, causing a permanent rift in the community."

Some of the best games ever in my opinion were from the SNES days. Super Metroid and A Link to the Past are some of my favorite games because you aren't hand held and there hidden hard modes built in. Super Metroid allows for sequence breaking if you can master the wall kick. The fastest way to do a 100% run without using glitches is to go through most of the game without getting most of the secrets in Brinstar and Crateria until near the end when you have all the upgrades and can do them all in one fell swoop. In this way, you have to kill Phantoon with only 4 energy tanks, which is tricky. Then later on, you have to fight Ridley with a limited amount of energy and ammo. There's a lot of rooms in Maridia that appear useless but the entire map is used if you are doing efficient pathing which isn't obvious at first glance.

....you obviously never played the original 8-bit NES Metroid. Some of that stuff was insane... and they DIDN'T give you little animals tossing you hints or anything like that...

I still remember my friends saying SNES Metroid was "cheapened" by the X-Ray viewer.

It just goes to show you... what you enjoy today is considered watered down by those of yesterday.

Isn't it immature that you call him Donald "Dump"?
I agree, it's childish and stupid - and that's my point. it's meant as a deliberate mockery of his blatant disrespect via using "Crooked Hillary", and thus I can call him "Dump" since he dumps his campaign promises, dumps campaign managers, dumps his wives, wants to dump the first amendment, dumps common-sense war ethics and dumps the use of proper English in favor of a mongrel white-trash dialect.

I generally tend to ignore any complaints that anyone ever has about "new generation". These things are as old as language, there's really nothing new to them. Paying any attention to them is just a waste of time. I always imagine a grumpy old man with a cane.

Entitlement doesn't mean open access, entitlement means afforded by rights and enforced by law. There's a difference between handouts and entitlement. Lazy people want handouts; it's not legitimate entitlement even though plenty of them seem to think they have a right to those handouts when they don't. People who put into a system as mandated to do so because said system is supposed to provide for them are entitled to what they put in. That's a night and day difference really. It's a problem bigger than a mere game though, it extends to schools, workplace, and society at large and is a condition of the ease of living the first world provides.

It just goes to show you... what you enjoy today is considered watered down by those of yesterday.

Yep. If we had cavemen that were still alive, I'm sure we'd have them trying their best to convince us that the only sport for real men is to bash large animals to death with slightly sharpened rocks. The older generation has always, always been all "oh, we did this and it was the BEST and it is way better than that shitty stuff today!"

Heck, if we listened to ourselves, humans, as a species? We've been getting consistently worse at everything we do since we became intelligent enough to complain about it.

I generally tend to ignore any complaints that anyone ever has about "new generation". These things are as old as language, there's really nothing new to them. Paying any attention to them is just a waste of time.

There has never been the kind of gaming revolution that happened to my generation, so this is completely and utterly new as far as gaming goes. Yes, the idea is the same; young people don't know how well they have it. That's been true forever.

However, kids born in the 90's, especially those who started playing games this millennium, seem to have absolutely no clue whatsoever as to how awesome things are right now. Hell, gaming is mainstream now. They've been born into a world where there's internet, where MMO:s are possible, where you can whine and bitch and demand whatever you want and you won't get the crap smacked out of you.

I did play the 8-bit Metroid. That game was very hard and lacked the depth that Super Metroid had in it's design. The animals in Super Metroid only taught you the hidden moves which were non-essential to win the game but were key to sequence breaking. Even with the X-Ray scope, I never could get 100%, even after scoping out the entire game until I got on the internet many years later and found out that there was a hidden area in lower Crateria where a super missile was hidden (I somehow missed that). I've an entire LP on youtube which shows off the deep intricacies of the game I've discovered. (search "super metroid LP" and my video comes up first in the search on youtube).

The problem with the original game is that when you died, you had to grind your health back up and that was redundant in design. I haven't played it a whole lot though but back in the day, I won it without the Varia suit because I didn't know that it was in the game. I later on found out and was like, no wonder why this game was so hard. NES had a lot of tough games compared to SNES but I wouldn't say their difficulty was good design (well the original Metroid and Zelda were on the right track, in that you needed to find the right items to make the difficulty reasonable). SNES I feel hit the right balance. I tried to play Kid Icarus (on the NES) in recent times and that game has proven too hard for me to get into. Many of the Mega Man games on the NES were harder than the ones the SNES.

where you can whine and bitch and demand whatever you want and you won't get the crap smacked out of you.

You know, I still can't see what's so awesome about having the crap smacked out of you for wanting something better. That sounds like the slave mentality at it's earnest. "Back in a day when we asked for non-moldy bread, master used to beat us with a stick. Kids these days get fresh bread and they dare to ask for non-stale water! Oh, the ENTITLEMENT GENERATION!"

You know, I still can't see what's so awesome about having the crap smacked out of you for wanting something better. That sounds like the slave mentality at it's earnest. "Back in a day when we asked for non-moldy bread, master used to beat us with a stick. Kids these days get fresh bread and they dare to ask for non-stale water! Oh, the ENTITLEMENT GENERATION!"

You can try to spin it however you like, but you know that's not what I meant. What I mean are spoiled brats who think they can scream and yell as much as they want, and demand whatever they want, regardless of it being completely unreasonable, mainly because they come from parents who give into them every single time, or ignore them when they're behaving like complete assholes, instead of putting their kids in line with some actual parenting. That same mentality spills over to the gaming world then, where these same spoiled brats think it's fine to demand anything at whim, because their ass is the only ass that has any significance in the world.

Every time somebody uses the word "Entitlement", a Republican gets hit with a pie...

...in the face...

...usually thrown by me. :P

- it's when they COMBINE a video game that one plays for general pleasure/relaxation after a hard day at work/school and treat the Warcraft society like they should be playing a video game at the same stress-level as their real-life jobs (ore real-life in general)... that's what frightens me.... >_<

How is wiping once in LFR stressful? If this makes someone stressed they should consider quitting. How is not getting loot from LFR for two weeks stressfull? If you are getting stressed because you have to do some quests to get something then you should really take a good look at yourself.
How is this at the same stress-level as your job? You must have almost no stress at your job.

You know what is stressful in WoW? Entitled people who think doing 20k dps in ToES LFR is good enough to get loot and in the meanwhile don't listen to what anyone has to say and fail on tactics and wipe the group.
I have less 'stress' when I play with good players who put in effort but we wipe 50 times than doing LFR and we wipe once because some people are not bothered to read chat. If you want to call it stress.

You can try to spin it however you like, but you know that's not what I meant. What I mean are spoiled brats who think they can scream and yell as much as they want, and demand whatever they want, regardless of it being completely unreasonable, mainly because they come from parents who give into them every single time, or ignore them when they're behaving like complete assholes, instead of putting their kids in line with some actual parenting. That same mentality spills over to the gaming world then, where these same spoiled brats think it's fine to demand anything at whim, because their ass is the only ass that has any significance in the world.

It has nothing to do with "wanting something better."

It's fine to demand whatever you want. No one needs to actually give it to you. I can walk up to a random person and ask them for a million dollars, a pony, and a trip to Jupiter. Never hurts to ask!

By the way, can I have a million dollars, a pony, and a trip to Jupiter? I really think I deserve it. Even the Jupiter part. I have low self-esteem.

Except of course when the person you're "asking" something of decides you'll look better with your nose on your cheek. Incidentally, I've seen that happen. A guy, brought up by parents who shouldn't have had children, decided it's OK for him to demand something from someone, ended up taking a nap.

Did he learn from that? Of course not. 20+ years of being brought up wrong won't be fixed by anything.

You can try to spin it however you like, but you know that's not what I meant. What I mean are spoiled brats who think they can scream and yell as much as they want, and demand whatever they want, regardless of it being completely unreasonable, mainly because they come from parents who give into them every single time, or ignore them when they're behaving like complete assholes, instead of putting their kids in line with some actual parenting. That same mentality spills over to the gaming world then, where these same spoiled brats think it's fine to demand anything at whim, because their ass is the only ass that has any significance in the world.

It has nothing to do with "wanting something better."

Except those "spoiled brats" were always there. Every generation had them. The word "entitlement" is so overused, it is applied to every case whenever anyone thinks that a quality of life improvement is in order. That's why I react to it the way I do.
I still don't see this "death of games" talk as anything other than older generation pulling a "kids these days" rant. I play videogames for 13 years, and games improved by leaps and bounds since then. Yeah, some games used to be more difficult, but that doesn't translate into "more fun". Difficulty is only fun when done right.

PS: same with length. Judging a game by its LENGTH is why we have insane amount of useless padding in today's games. I don't care if the game is 8 hours long, as long as it's GOOD.

Except those "spoiled brats" were always there. Every generation had them. The word "entitlement" is so overused, it is applied to every case whenever anyone thinks that a quality of life improvement is in order. That's why I react to it the way I do.
I still don't see this "death of games" talk as anything other than older generation pulling a "kids these days" rant. I play videogames for 13 years, and games improved by leaps and bounds since then. Yeah, some games used to be more difficult, but that doesn't translate into "more fun". Difficulty is only fun when done right.

Well, it's a moot point for me to argue what I mean by entitled 90's born kids with you, when you apparently are one of them, or at the very least close to that, and you're just defending yourself.

If 1999 is when you first started playing games, then you kind of missed the revolution.